Muse and Mischief

I don’t know about y’all, but the older I get the more I find that my creative spirit is far more intertwined with nature than I originally thought. It’s so easy to see it looking back, but I guess at the time I didn’t realize. 

Being in nature in special moments always inspires me and it’s funny how easily I can pinpoint those moments in my memory. For example, in New Mexico there is a place called Cloudcroft that was an hour or two away from where we lived on base. 

It was up in the mountains and was filled with large forests with really tall trees full of leaves. In the fall my mom would drive us up there to look at the leaves. There was a tunnel that we would go through and once we were on the other side the world was filled with wonderful shades of Reds, Yellows, Oranges, and Purples that swayed in the breeze like waves on water. 

I can think of that memory now and still feel that inspiration. Another is when I was in middle school and living in Hawaii. My middle school band class got invited to go play concerts in Maui and we went up to the top of Haleakula crater early one morning and watched the sunrise over the clouds. That experience inspired many drawings and experiences in stories and poems. 

I would say that the consistent experience in nature that inspires me is the wind. There is just something about being wrapped in the wind that always lights up my creativity. I was down in the South Texas over the holiday and went to the zoo with my family. My son was waiting for the lion’s cage to finish cleaning so he could see it. So I was just sitting on a stone bench while he ran around chasing my wife.

A cool breeze started blowing through the area and it just struck me with inspiration so I quick wrote down what just came to mind. This is what came from that:

The wind kisses my skin
On a calm Tuesday morning.
In a world of captivity,
How do I feel so free?

Where words come without effort
In the elusive dance
With a muse that is fickle and divine
The branches rustle above
Like waves on the shore.

It’s a delicate dance
Of trying to do more than exist
In a world hell bent to consume you
And spit you out once the flavor is lost.

But the world outside this one
Marches on to a beat
That no one understands
Yet so many try. 

It’s in these moments
Where the world reveals 
The tinniest sliver of its wonderment.

I fear any deeper
Would draw me further from
This life I love.

What effect does nature have on you? Does it inspire you to create or possibly to appreciate life a little deeper?